Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Lagerbiers from around Dresden 1878 - 1880

More from the wonderful tables of "Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel" from 1903. It's undoubtedly the best single source of 19th-century beer analyses I've found.

This is an interesting set, having been collected in one area over just a couple of years. I recognise some of the names: Waldschlösschen, Feldschlösschen and Radeberg. Though, given the range of gravities, I don't believe these are all really a single type of beer.

Unfortunately, only in a couple of cases is there any mention of the colour. I wouldn't like to guess what the colour of the others was. If it was 20 or 30 years later, I'd assume most were pretty pale. But the 1870's is a bit early for Pale Lager. That was still mostly a product of Bohemia and Austria, with the Viennese or Munich styles most popular elsewhere in Europe. There are two examples whose colour I'm prepared to guess: the bömisch is pale and the Bavaria dark. The rest are anybody's guess.

The most identifiable type is bömisch. The two examples are some of the weakest and it looks like bömisch is the equivalent of Výčepní Pivo. The gravities are very low for German bottom-fermenting beers. The weakest Helles seems to fit in with the bömisch stylistically. All three have relatively high degrees of attenuation.

While I'm on the topic of attenuation, you'll note that it's a good bit higher than in the Winterbier and Sommerbier from Nürnberg we looked at. Sommerbier averaged 71.17% and Winterbier 69.30%, as opposed to 74.37% here. That could be connected with their generally higher gravity: Sommerbier averaged 1058 and Winterbier 1053.6.

Of course, modern Lager have much higher degrees of attenuation, more like 85%. Which explains why, though the gravities are higher than today, the ABV, at 5%, is very similar to today's equivalent beers.

The next identifiable group is Dunkles, though they both come from the same brewery, Waldschlösschen. They're both around what I would call Export strength of around 15º Plato. While we're talking about strength, Waldschlösschen has the largest range of gravities, supplying both the highest and lowest. The strongest, Bavaria, is up in Bock territory and approaching Doppelbock land.

There are some examples which are clearly versions of the same beer. For example, the Felsenkeller at 1050, Gambrinus at 1053, Hofbrauhaus at 1055 and Nöthnitz at 1042. And you can see some breweries had a range of beers at different gravities: Hofbrauhaus at 1045, 1055 and 1063; Feldschlösschen at 1050 and 1054; Felsenkeller also at 1050 and 1054.

One odd thing. If I remove the extremes at either end - all the beers with gravities below 1048 and above 1058 - the averages for the remaining beers come to almost exactly the same as for the whole group.

There's loads more Lager fun in "Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel". Just a lot of work extracting it all. Expect more dribbles regularly.